Doctoral qualifying exams are considered essential in assessing a student's readiness for research and advanced studies. Despite their significant role in many physics programs, questions have been raised about their format, execution, and relevance. Our research investigates perceptions held by faculty members regarding the graduate doctoral…

The research funding patterns at ten doctorate-granting universities across the country were investigated. These universities were classified by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education as R2: Higher Research Activity institutions. Findings pointed to patterns in funding and research growth and the relationship between research administrators…

This chapter discusses the impact of undergraduate research as a form of engaged student learning. It summarizes the gains reported in post-fellowship assessment essays acquired from students participating in the Auburn University Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program. The chapter also discusses the program's efforts to increase opportunities…

In recent decades, the focus and approach to college students' development and engagement had evolved to include more holistic student developmental factors (i.e., mental, emotional, financial, social/spiritual, and physical wellness) as higher education professionals assisted students in multiple areas of development. Higher education…

This article describes a project to engage sociology students in real-world research designed to foster critical thinking about food security. Faculty-librarian collaboration was an essential component. An open-ended questionnaire was administered to three classes at the end of the semester. Assessed were students' experiences gathering data and…

Chemical substances from theses are not widely accessible as searchable machine-readable formats. In this article, we describe our workflow for extracting, registering, and sharing chemical substances from the University of Alabama theses to enhance discovery. In total, 73 theses were selected for the project, resulting in about 3,000 substances…

There is social and collaborative value in a diverse student body, faculty, and staff. Despite this, universities are slow to establish evidence-based fiscal initiatives to increase representation and retention. We review inequitable financial practices in American higher education, including in endowments, tuition and annual giving, athletics,…

Programmatic text analysis can be used to understand patterns and reveal trends in data that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to uncover with manual coding methods. This work uses programmatic text analysis, specifically term frequency counts, to study nearly 10,000 chemistry thesis and dissertation titles from 1911-2015. The thesis and…

Digital badging has seen widespread adoption within the US higher education sector with continued growth predicted. Might digital badging present an underrealized opportunity for libraries seeking new vehicles through which to deliver information literacy instructional content? This paper offers an analysis of badging in higher education and…

Scholarship has provided some insight into inequities that exist within sorority and fraternity life (SFL), whereas members of culturally based sororities and fraternities within Multicultural Greek Councils (MGC) and National Pan-Hellenic Councils (NPHC) report being treated as inferior to those in historically white organizations. However, few…

Scholarship on college choice largely focuses on how students search for colleges but less is known about how colleges recruit students. This article analyzes off-campus recruiting visits for 15 public research universities. We Web-scrape university admissions websites and issue public records requests to collect data on recruiting visits.…

11 community colleges in New Jersey and two Historically Black Community Colleges (one in Alabama and one in Mississippi) joined the OnPath project, which had the goal to help community college students stay enrolled during the pandemic. OnPath facilitated a powerful combination of people and knowledge by bringing together college staff members…

From 2016-2019, Jacksonville State University (JSU) librarians embraced the call to incorporate increased active learning into traditional library information instruction. Librarians began this process by integrating the use of a scavenger hunt into the Houston Cole Library's new orientation tailgate event. Breakout EDU Escape Room kits with a…

Google Scholar and academic library discovery systems are both popular resources among academic users for finding scholarly information. By conducting an online survey with 975 users from more than 20 public research universities across the United States, this study comparatively investigates how and why academic users use these two resources.…

With an adult obesity rate of 35.6%, Alabama is the second most obese state in the United States. Alabama Extension and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) joined in the first collaboration between the CDC and land-grant institutions to prevent further incidence and reduce the prevalence of obesity. The objective of our study was…